1. Field
The present invention is directed to human assisted searches and, more particularly, to an automated tool for human assisted mining of search results for the purpose of returning a precise result in response to a search request.
2. Description of the Related Art
A resource such as a search engine, e.g., Google®, Clusty®, Yahoo®, etc., may be utilized to submit a request for information that meets particular criteria and retrieve desired information from results returned in response to the request. Due to the vast amount of information available over the Internet, locating information using a search engine requires accurately formulating a query or a keyword(s) for a search requested. However, typical search engines fetch as many web pages as possible in which a requested keyword or query appears and generally require additional searching of the web pages to obtain desired information.
In situations where results returned from an initial search using a search engine do not produce desired information, subsequent searches using other search engine(s) may be performed. However, these subsequent searches require repeating the search and browsing through returned results to locate the desired information. While meta search engines such as Jux2™, Dogpile®, etc., query various search engines and return results from the search engines, all known meta search engines, Internet directories and other similar technologies provide comprehensive listing of web pages containing a requested keyword or query and require user to browse through results to obtain desired information. Typically additional searching of the results is required, especially when the desired information requires accessing a web page produced as a result of a search and running a process or routine made available via the web page such as converting a value, translating a word or sentence of one language into another, etc. to obtain the desired information.
The above-discussed problems are further exacerbated for users of devices such as cellular phones because current search engines return search results that are often irrelevant to what the users desire to know and require the users to interact and view contents of listed web sites or modify and re-enter queries to obtain relevant results. Cellular phone users are sometimes frustrated by the limited display capability and awkward input methods of cellular phones, which further complicates the search function when using a cellular phone.
Although various types of search engines and other resources are available for locating information, there is a need for a tool that provides relevant, focused and accurate information to users from a broad base of knowledge and information.